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After more than five hours of closed session deliberation, Consolidated High School District 230 board members voted unanimously Tuesday night to terminate a high school cheerleading coach who exchanged a "profane" text message with a student. Bridget Guzior, the 29-year-old head cheerleading coach...

Oak Park police are searching for six people who were involved in the robbery of a pizza delivery driver on Sunday night. According to police, two women were standing in the 1400 block of North Austin Boulevard when they called over to the delivery driver, a Chicago resident, at 11:32 p.m. They...

The CTA board on Wednesday unanimously approved raising bus and train fares by 25 cents next year, following the region's two other transit agencies, which also hiked their prices in response to state budget cuts. The 2018 fare increase — the first across-the-board increase in nine years — is intended...

Cook County voters will get their say on whether recreational marijuana use should be made legal for adults in Illinois, after commissioners on Wednesday voted to put that question on the March primary ballot. Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the advisory referendum. Board President Toni...

For Maine East High School teacher Jennifer Conlon, being able to read cursive can help students better connect with the past. "A lot of historical primary documents are written in longhand; I would hate kids to not be able to experience those first hand because they couldn't read them," she said.

A Naperville woman was arrested on a prostitution charge at a Warrenville spa Monday, police said. Yanfang Pan, 47, of the 200 block of Fiala Woods Court, owner of Sunlight Spa, was arrested about 2:15 p.m. at her 29W701 Butterfield Road business following a joint investigation by the Warrenville...

A man attempted to lure an 11-year-old girl into his minivan Tuesday at the Naperville Crossings mall, Naperville police said. It was the third incident in which a young girl has been targeted since Friday, according to police reports. The man, described as about 60 years old with a long black...

Police face an increasingly common challenge: how to tell if a driver is high. As states legalize marijuana use, opioid abuse runs rampant, the methamphetamine crisis continues and new synthetic drugs hit the streets, law enforcement authorities say it’s more common than ever to encounter motorists...

South suburban homeowners should care about the political feud between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios, chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. South Cook residents sick of paying high property taxes should pay attention to the dispute involving the two...

Major cuts to high school athletics and a shortening of the school day no longer are on the list of proposed moves to help School District 308 balance its future budget. Increasing student registration, driver's education, athletic and student parking fees, however, are left on the list to be considered....

A former elite gymnast who for four decades has operated a powerhouse Westmont training facility was banned by USA Gymnastics after an investigation revealed he violated its code of ethical conduct. Todd Gardiner of Illinois Gymnastics Institute is no longer allowed to coach the sport after the...

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered tightened restrictions on former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, including barring him from possessing pornography, using sex chat lines or having any contact with minors except in the presence of an adult who is aware of his sexual abuse of boys decades ago....

Mary Lou Swanson's body was shutting down after battling a rare and debilitating autoimmune disease affecting her brain for nearly a decade. What happened next is something the 54-year-old North Aurora woman herself admits is almost inconceivable.

Suburban sports

Joe Burton's resume and bearing could give rise to a misconception about Valparaiso's 6-foot-6 junior swingman. "With being as highly recruited as Joe was, there's the stereotype as a gunner, but it couldn't be further from the truth with him," VU coach Matt Lottich said. "He's a very willing teammate,...

Sometimes, 12 strikes in a row mean more than perfection in bowling and a nice ring from the United States Bowling Congress — if it's your first 300 game. Jimmy Hampton's effort on Dec. 5 at City Lanes in Michigan City was his first career perfecto. But for the Chesterton junior, it meant a whole...

St. Rita senior Tommy Russell was just one of the guys in the Mustangs' wrestling room last season. When four-time state champion Austin O'Connor is on your team, it's easy to blend in. Now, with O'Connor at North Carolina and Russell coming off a sixth-place finish in Class 3A at 113 pounds, things...

Most read stories this hour

Dan Johnson, a Republican state lawmaker in Kentucky known for inflammatory Facebook posts comparing Barack and Michelle Obama to monkeys and who defiantly denied allegations that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl in the basement of his home, killed himself Wednesday night. He was 57. Bullitt...

For five days, jurors heard how the state’s child protection system had repeatedly failed Gizzell Ford, an 8-year-old girl found strangled, starved and brutally beaten inside her grandmother’s West Side apartment. They were “blown away” by crime scene photos and injury details, one juror said,...

The Tribune's Brad Biggs answers your Bears questions weekly. Is Devin Hester a first-ballot Hall of Famer? — @PierceCallaghan Hester was a dynamic performer who made a huge impact on the game during his prime, and as I wrote in Wednesday’s print edition, I believe he is worthy of consideration...

The internet — as we know it — is likely to die Thursday at the hands of the Trump administration. What’s more, we’ll be expected to pay for the burial. This is what’s called a “lose-lose” situation. In one of its most anti-consumer and anti-business decisions yet, the Republican-controlled Federal...

After the officer involved was acquitted of second-degree murder charges, officials in Arizona released graphic video showing Daniel Shaver crawling on his hands and knees and begging for his life in the moments before he was shot and killed by police in January 2016. Shaver died in one of at least...

I spent the first two decades of my career as a social scientist studying liars and their lies. I thought I had developed a sense of what to expect from them. Then along came President Donald Trump. His lies are both more frequent and more malicious than ordinary people's. In research beginning...

This is the alternate ending. Over the last year and a half, I wrote a column for the Tribune recounting my experience living the dream — an untutored layperson flipping a house for the first time. Each month I wrote about port-a-potties and plumbing fixtures, countertops and coach houses. My final...

Say what you want about President Donald Trump, but he’s certainly been good for the Democratic Party book tour business. Just a few weeks after Hillary Clinton sold out the Auditorium Theater at $90-a-head and up, former Vice President Joe Biden packed them into the Chicago Theatre at prices that...

House and Senate Republican leaders have reached an agreement in principle that would lower the corporate tax rate to 21 percent beginning in 2018, several people briefed on the plan said, a central component of the $1.5 trillion tax plan they hope to vote into law by next week. The agreement would...

Cook County voters will get their say on whether recreational marijuana use should be made legal for adults in Illinois, after commissioners on Wednesday voted to put that question on the March primary ballot. Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the advisory referendum. Board President Toni...

His hands trembled at first. Then his vision blurred. Finally, unable to control a malignant blood pressure condition, Tinley Park cardiac surgeon Banio Koroma lost his malpractice insurance, then his operating room privileges and finally his professional standing. Fortunately, he lived in Illinois,...

The Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes and the Marlins’ trade of slugger Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees have dominated the winter meetings and delayed some momentum by several teams, but agent Scott Boras tried to make up for lost time discussing the future of free agent Jake Arrieta. In the case of the...

Without saying a word, Kyle Schwarber told the Cubs, “Keep me.” The outfielder showed up at baseball’s winter meetings in Orlando, Fla., at least 20 pounds lighter and noticeably leaner, the strongest statement yet about his future. It was enough to drown out all the whispers. Some professional...

He inches forward, with jets overhead and the ground 50 stories below. Larry Johnson can feel it happening: the arrival, he calls it, of the demons. They push him toward the barrier of a rooftop deck of an apartment building where he sometimes comes to visit a friend and, in moments like these,...

Cubs President Theo Epstein doesn’t view Mike Montgomery’s strong desire to become a full-time starting pitcher as big of a threat to his club as an improved Cardinals roster. As the rival Cardinals completed a trade Wednesday that landed them slugging outfielder Marcell Ozuna from the ransacked...

After more than five hours of closed session deliberation, Consolidated High School District 230 board members voted unanimously Tuesday night to terminate a high school cheerleading coach who exchanged a "profane" text message with a student. Bridget Guzior, the 29-year-old head cheerleading coach...

Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former reality TV star who joined President Donald Trump's White House as one of his most prominent African American supporters, resigned under pressure after a confrontation with Chief of Staff John Kelly that ended when she was escorted from the premises, White House...

The theme of the party was Magic, Martinis and Mario, and there was an awful lot of the latter two. It was at Mario Batali's buzzy Los Angeles restaurant Osteria Mozza, the week of the Oscars in March 2010. Vanity Fair publisher Edward Menicheschi was hosting a private dinner for advertisers, and...

A former professional BMX rider who set a world record for the longest power-assisted bicycle backflip has died. The wife of Rhode Island native Kevin "K-Rob" Robinson tells The Providence Journal her husband suffered an apparent stroke Saturday. He was 45. Robin Adams Robinson says the death was...

While all the squishy liberals out there in godless America were celebrating Democrat Doug Jones’ victory in the Alabama Senate race, I’m guessing President Donald Trump was smiling, knowing he had again proven himself the ultimate deal maker. Granted, Trump had offered his full-throated endorsement...

Dowell Loggains could see a switch flip in Jordan Howard. In the first half of the 33-7 victory Sunday over the Bengals, the Bears’ second-year running back failed to gain the yard needed for a first down on second-and-1. As he came to the sideline, Howard told the offensive coordinator, “I have...

People love to pick on chain restaurants. Like used car salesmen, the mass feeders are easy targets. Their uniformity and ubiquity seem to go against a culture increasingly bent on personal customization. Indeed, it has been a rough past few years for casual chains, whose customer base has been...

Here are two certainties about the Trump-Russia investigation. It won't end soon. It will get uglier. A new shoe drops almost daily in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe. First, former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying and agreed to cooperate. Then the White House...

College sports loves a good debate. See Selection Sunday or the eternal arguments over major college football’s playoff system. Reaching a consensus on Illinois’ greatest college coaches was similarly murky. Though we limited the list to Division I — with apologies to legends such as North Central’s...

President Donald Trump’s Tuesday tweet disparaging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was roundly denounced as a new low, even for a guy who seems perfectly at home in gutters. To wit: “A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore,” the USA Today editorial board wrote, “is not fit to...